CHESTER — With the deadline looming Friday for the Philadelphia Union to get its roster into salary compliance with Major League Soccer, John Hackworth’s staff has some tough decisions remaining.

It’s a situation that the manager may not have foreseen when the preseason began.

With the countdown to Saturday’s opener against Sporting Kansas City finally being tracked in hours rather than days, Hackworth and company have decisions to make at both ends of the roster. However they turn out, the product will likely be a team miles ahead of the one that stumbled across the finish line last season.

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Per league rules, the team has 30 spots on its roster and limited financial flexibility as to how much they can make. The latest cuts, in the decision not to retain the services of trialists Jordi Vidal and Georgi Hristov, have the team at around 29 bodies. Among those remaining is well-traveled American Matt Kassel, who may find himself making the final cut.

The financial machinations — most of which are closely guarded secrets by the league — are far more convoluted. Part of the pressure this offseason is being exerted by the graduation from Generation Adidas status of Jack McInerney, Amobi Okugo and Zac MacMath. Under their previous protection, neither their salaries nor their roster spaces counted against the cap. Then there’s Freddy Adu, on the roster and counting against the cap with his designated-player salary.

The bottom line is that the complexity means tough decisions.

“There are some guys that we didn’t want to get rid of, that we would love to have the opportunity to be in our locker room, but we don’t have that luxury, both in roster spots and in cap space,” Hackworth said Wednesday at his weekly press conference.

The difficultly extends to the 11 players who’ll have their names called Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. at PPL Park. Hackworth readily admits the process of narrowing the team down to the most worthy starting XI has been more complex than he anticipated with a couple of spots still open just days beforehand.

That’s not necessarily a negative, though.

“I would’ve thought that the starting XI that we have in our war room in the back on a board, in a perfect world that same lineup would be the lineup that we would be rolling out on Saturday,” Hackworth said. “And I don’t think that’s going to be the case. That means a couple things. Some guys may not be in the position we thought they’d be in. Other guys may have stepped their games up.”

On the whole, Hackworth paints the competition as a positive, with more players exceeding expectations than failing to live up to them.

As a result, Hackworth’s team appears to be developing the kind of depth that a long MLS season is adept at testing.

“We’re a team that feels like it has some good depth right now, and that’s a great thing for a coach to have,” Hackworth said. “I don’t think you can be successful in the league being 13 or 14 players deep. You have to go deep into your roster, especially really when you get to the bulk of the year.”

For more on the Union, visit Matthew De George’s blog at uniontally.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter @sportsdoctormd.